Railway tickets resellers busted

(Xinhua)

10:41, February 04, 2013

BEIJING, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese police have arrested three suspects over railway tickets resold at elevated prices after they were purchased from an official website using a special browser plug-in.

Many Chinese people working far from their families scramble for a ticket home amid the large-scale migration ahead of the Spring Festival, a traditional Chinese holiday for family reunions.

Software and web browsers specially made to secure ticket-booking at 12306.cn, the official ticket selling site set up by the Ministry of Railways, recently became a hit among prospective travelers.

The three suspects, identified only with their surnames -- Ke, Zhang and Xie -- took advantage of one such web browser plug-in to purchase more than 300 tickets with a total face value of some 60,000 yuan (9,550 U.S. dollars), according to a statement released on Sunday by the police bureau under the ministry.

The statement didn't reveal how much the three gained from the deal.

The three suspects were arrested by railway police in Xiamen, a coastal city in southeastern China's Fujian Province. Two computers, six cell phones and a huge number of ticket purchase receipts were also confiscated.

While stressing that profiting from reselling tickets bunch-purchased through plug-ins is illegal, police warned. Many believe that even using the plug-ins to snag tickets alone is unfair to other prospective buyers.

A record 3.41 billion trips are expected to be made over this year's travel rush around the Spring Festival, which falls on Feb. 10.